Kevin Thelwell’s departure from Everton when his contract runs out in the summer has been confirmed.
The Director of Football has guided Everton through one of the toughest periods in their history and dealt admirably with absent owner Farhad Moshiri and severe spending restrictions. In that time the club has a few transfer misses (Hi Neal) and some hits including the superb Illiman Ndiaye.
Thelwell’s best work came off the pitch where his 150-point plan for the club was restricted by Moshiri. His reign saw Everton move to a hybrid model in the academy, something Thelwell pushed against, and fail to build a recommended training ‘dome’ for the youth sides.
Thelwell did manage to recruit well at u21 and u18 level to bolster the squads. Braiden Graham, Justin Clarke, Cieran Loney, Will Tamen and Kingsford Boakye all have opportunities to develop. He has also transformed the club’s contract situations with the likes of Graham, talented goalkeeper Douglass Lukjanciks and Harrison Armstrong all signing contracts shortly after their 17th birthday. It means Everton can avoid young players leaving for rivals for pennies as we saw with Thierry Small and Isaac Price.
Thelwell was also open and honest with fans, posting updates at key periods when the club seemed rudderless.
And while some will point to his clash with Sean Dyche, poor use of the loan market and inability to get his plans in place across various aspects of the club, losing your Director of Football on the eve of the biggest summer rebuild in the club’s history seems a risky one.
Fortunately Everton have an ace up their sleeve. While much of the focus on Thelwell is on his recruitment record the majority of the prospects and targets signed during his reign will have originated elsewhere at the club.
Dan Purdy, the talented 31-year-old Head of Recruitment at Everton is an exceptional scout who is hugely respected in the game. Originally a performance analyst, he has progresses quickly through the ranks and was a favourite of Everton’s previous Director of Football Marcel Brands. He actually left the club when Brands did but was convinced to return by Thelwell with a new role and wider remit.
Rumours were that so impressed was Brands he tried to poach Purdy for PSV last year and a lot of it could be to do with his ability to spot talent at all levels of the game.
Purdy was on manager of scouting operations when they signed then 17-year-old Jarrad Branthwaite from Carlisle. Promoted in 2022, he is now head of recruitment responsible for senior men’s and emerging talent player recruitment, meaning he has been heavily involved in the youth recruitment over the past few years.
It is always difficult to attribute a signing to a single scout. A successful signing could the result of a scout or analyst doing the initial identification, a team of people assessing performances, senior scouts and staff making a final call and a Director of Football negotiating the actual transfer. It would be incorrect to attribute Everton’s transfer hits to Purdy only.
While Thelwell was behind the restructuring of the scouting team, the actual scouting has been led by Purdy. He has been involved at senior levels in many of Everton’s transfer successes in recent years. He has a good reputation in the game as a scout who can use data and analysis to identify talent and previous Directors of Football who have worked with him are huge fans of his work.
He is also behind the recent scout recruitment that has seen new roles focused on Italy, Portugal and Scandinavia. Everton’s new Scandanavia scout, Ole Nielsen, who was recruitmed by Purdy.
Nielsen told Tipsbladet: “Since I stopped in 2018, I have kept in touch with Dan Purdy. In the world of football, it’s all about networking.
“An opportunity arose where they want a little more focus on Scandinavia, and he (Dan Purdy) thought I was the right person for it.”
Perhaps his future at the club is even more key to the summer rebuild. He provides consistency at a senior recruitment level without the clash of responsibilities with the famously hands-on David Moyes that may have led to Thelwell’s departure.
His presence could also mean Thelwell’s departure is not a like-for-like appointment and instead Everton will move to a more Technical Director system where Purdy supports Moyes on recruitment and a Technical Director manages the academy, performance analysts and other footballing aspects of the club from youth level through to the first team. It is a role that the likes of Dan Ashworth and David Weir fulfil at Brighton and both have been linked to Everton in recent weeks.